Last week I ran into a variable called @continue in the sourcecode of a project I’m reviewing. At first I had to think a bit before I knew what the @ was for. Of course I knew it’s an escape character when used in front of a string value. But when used in front of a variable name? In that case, it is an escape character also, but this time for the name of your variable. This way you can use a reserved word as a variable name.
It’s been a while since I blogged, because…
– I started a new (exciting but busy) project building a technical framework (and ‘proving’ a reference architecture along the way).
– it looks like I might become a published writer when I hand in my article for the Dutch .NET magazine anywhere in the next couple of weeks.
– we had lot’s of meetings @ LogicaCMG lately, like the yearmeeting, an architect meeting, a funmeeting (bowling can be cool!), and so on.
– I’m planning on doing more along the way of competence development for my team, so I have to do some research and come up with a plan on how to do so.
– I was part of the orgnisation for the reunion of the musical I played in. We’re having it this saturday.
– our house still needs some ‘home improvement’ and I’m the guy to do it (preferably not ‘Tim Taylor’ style).
– I haven’t even had time to use my Xbox 360 the past couple of weeks!
As I posted earlier we had some trouble with upgrading the UIPAB to be used in a ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project. Eventually, we solved the problem and life was good. Almost a week ago I received a mail through my blog from someone looking for the solution. So here we go…
I encountered his error for the first time today. A Web Application Project I’ve been working on for the last months started throwing this error today almost every time I wanted to debug the project. The assembly info changed from time to time, but the error was the same. Most of the time I could ‘repair’ it by closing the ASP.NET development server. But sometimes, even that didn’t work.
I signed up at technorati recently. Technorati uses ping to get the info from blogs. And BloggingAbout.NET (Community Server) supports that. Or it should… Some posts just don’t show up over there! I’ve searched a little, and saw other people were having trouble with this too. I’ll see if I can find anything and if I do, I’ll forward it to our community administrator.
We all encountered them in the field somewhere along the way: pieces of code that are based on assumptions. There’s something fundamentally wrong in assuming when writing code. I can understand that, looking at the big picture, you sometimes have to make an assumption when developing software. Some things you just can’t know for sure. This might concern something simple like the resolution of the targeted audience. But most of the time these kinds of assumptions are based on experience or plain old common sense. When these assumptions fail to be true, most of the time a mitigation strategy is at hand. And the software usually keeps running.
Today I changed the appearance of my blog. The header has changed, and the content part is much wider. Because of the self-made banner I think this is a little more personal. Or a little less ordinary, whichever you prefer. If you have any feedback, please let me know. I think it’s pretty sweet, although this won’t show up pretty in a resolution below 1280 x 1024… Ah well, I think most people in our line of work will meet this requirement.
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It seems there’s something to be celebrated today, so my girlfriend went and bought this little gem for me called the Gear4 HouseParty II. Its design is pretty cool, and I must say the quality of the sound comming out of that little box (approx. 25 cm wide) is pretty stunning! It comes with docks for all iPods (except for the shuffle) and even has its own remote, which lets you skip songs, change the volume and even use the iPod menu. Thanks Kaatje, for this pretty neat present!
After managing to dodge tags for quite some time, I’ve been tagged twice this week. Both PJ van de Sande and Marcel Boersma tagged me, so here we go…
**We named our cat after a dog
** Our cat’s name is ‘Dribbel’, which is the Dutch name for the dog ‘Spot’. The most important reason for naming the cat like that, is because of a big white spot on its back and a smaller black spot on its nose. Next to that, ‘dribbelen’ is Dutch for a certain way of walking which Dribbel does too… And of course, we just liked the name ;).
Scott Guthrie announced it January 23rd: version 1.0 of the ASP.NET AJAX extensions has been released. Good news … !
Scott also added a post containing Links to ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 resources, and answers to some common questions. A good read for people who would like to get started on AJAX. It catches some of the common problems you might encounter when you get started with the ASP.NET AJAX extensions. I liked the addition 2.0 (ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX extensions), but that’s not used everywhere. Probably because it’s kinda weird using two (different) version numbers in a single products’ name after adding 1.0 for the version for the AJAX library… (full & difficult productname used here.)
This morning we landed in Amsterdam at approximately 7.30 am. We had a great week in America, starting of with the great sessions at Microsoft for LEAP. Together with a colleague of mine (Ruud Campsteijn) I stayed for a few more days, so we got to see some more than just the inside of the Microsoft building, like an NBA game, the Boeing factory, Downtown Seattle and so on. You will be hearing more about the LEAP sessions in a little while. Right now, I’ve been awake for 24 30 hours straight, so it might be a good idea to go sleep now…
It’s almost here… Next monday me and about 30 LogicaCMG colleagues will be heading to Redmond. I’m pretty excited: we’ll be attending some pretty cool sessions, and some of us will get the opportunity to take a look at Microsofts vision of the future home in their Microsoft Home. Besides that I’ll stay a few days longer, so I can see something of America. My first trip over there ever … !